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A pair of Japanese anthropologists crouch in video ambush. A pig's head sits on the floor, staring blankly past the cameras pointing at the female Hmong shaman. Our own documentary crew director wishes the woman would stay in the area he has lit for her, but kerbs his directorial impulses. Beating upon a circular drum, the old shaman begins her ritual.

At first sight, Mae Tho, a northern Thailand village of some 700 people of the Hmong tribe, seems hardly the place for the rituals we have come to film. Amid the incongruous TV antennas and litter of this settlement, the phuyai ban or headman assures us that we are in the right place, and that for an appropriate donation we might film their New Year ceremonies.

It is a sign of formidable adaptability that 60-year old Chai Laohang, the village mo phi or spirit medium, can prepare for her most important trance of the year while a film crew sets up lights around the altar in her cramped hut. Chai, smooth faced, with clear bright eyes, wears heavy silver necklaces and a jacket whose elaborate decoration explain perfectly why lowland Thais sometimes refer to hill tribes like the Hmong as "the embroidery people."

With cameras and microphone nosing after her, the shaman dons a black hood. Drumming, she summons the spirits whom she will consult about the fate of the village for the coming year. After several minutes, she passes the drum to her son before seating herself in front of the spirit altar. Pulling the dark hood over her face, she invites the spirits of ancestors to speak through her.

She rocks rapidly from side to side, head turning and feet drumming upon the earthen floor while she beats a tambourine rattle. The vigour of her movements seems uncharacteristic of a woman of her years. Suddenly, an oddly young voice emits from her mouth, wailing a mixture of words and incomprehensible sounds.

Despite the drama of the moment, villagers and children wander in and out of the hut, some more interested in our film equipment than in the ceremony. Others, keen to hear whatever answers may be give to questions she has asked of the spirits on their behalf, listen closely to her utterances. For over an hour she rocks on the bench, feet drumming and head twisting, sometimes voicing audible incantations and at other times silent.

"How long will the trance last?" I ask the anthropologists. "No one knows," answers the woman. "As long as the spirits are talking," adds her male colleague. After almost three hours of trance, her singing ceases. The spirits have spoken sufficiently. Chai rises slowly from the bench, pulls back her black hood and, collecting offerings of baht from those for whom she has interceded, she retires, exhausted from her journey to the Otherworld.

The Hmong are the second largest of Thailand's six hill major tribes, with some 70,000 people scattered across the Golden Triangle in 250 villages. While they still retain their distinctive dress and language, life is changing for these former master growers of poppies. No longer do they amass silver ingots and jewellery while standing aloof from their host country. Now, under government pressure, they have replaced their opium fields with cabbages and maize.

For all that, Mae Tho village - northeast of Lampang - still seems a place suspended in time. The annual rounds of harvest and courtship seem both a reiteration of the past and an assurance of the future. The living, their ancestors and their future descendants all cross paths at New Year - especially when boy meets girl.

We wander through the village, documentary voyeurs peeping at the keyholes of ritual. Chattering teenage girls sit in worn clothes - last year's best - embroidering minute geometries of colour onto gleaming, new black satin - this year's finery. Against a backdrop of blue hills there is a dream-like sense to this rhythm of fingers, and to the rattle of ancient treadle sewing machines. The girls are preparing for a ball, literally.

There are few tribes more lost than a doco crew with nothing to shoot. The village head man has told us that there will be a courtship ceremony which we can film this afternoon. "Where?" asks the producer. "Right here, where you stand".

We look around this dusty clearing between the drab huts. A pig snuffles past, temporarily reprieved from sacrifice or soup. Three young boys play luk khang, a game in which a heavy teak top spun from a cord is sent smashing into the opponents' tops. The savage accuracy, from up to ten metres away, plus the full body English (or "body Hmong") in their whip arm delivery, is astonishing - but not what we're here to film.

"Where have all those kids gone in their 'trads'?" moans the producer, using his term for traditional clothing. The teenage seamstresses have disappeared, and no males of eligible age - around 18 years old - have been seen for hours. The headman wanders off, leaving us to the midday sun. Even the Japanese anthropologists have disappeared.

Suddenly there is a commotion - a pack of motorcycles. A brace of teenage Hmong boys tears into the village clearing, revving their 125 cc bikes like kids on new wheels do the world over. Each one is dressed like Marlon Brando gone Day-Glo. A gang of hill tribe Wild Ones wearing embroidered "trads" and fake Ray Bans.

Their black satin pants and jackets gleam in the sun, starbursts of acrylic colour flickering down each arm. A galaxy of spangles and silver coins glitters across each back. Some wear red and black pom pom caps. The spectacle overwhelms the drabness of the village - and the producer. Formerly thwarted by being all loaded up with nowhere to shoot, he now can't decide what to film first. His problems have just begun. Another cloud of dust billows down the road.

"Here come the girls!" someone cries. Two pick-ups wheel into the clearing, carrying a brilliant cargo. A dozen Hmong girls step daintily down to meet their suitors. An impossible complexity of colour ripples across every surface of their clothing. I understand why it is said of the Hmong that "their embroidery is their genius." Each girl is wearing her family fortune in jewellery; silver hangs at their throats in horseshoe necklaces and in tassels and spangles around their waists. Their jackets are fringed with silver coins that, on closer examination, turn out to be old French Indo-China francs and British India rupees.

Among the girls there seems something incongruous. True, all them are wearing sneakers and bobby sox - hardly traditional - but one is sporting expensive white gym shoes and bobbed, short hair. She points a video camera at us and calls "Hullo!" in English. "It's the anthropologist woman!" wails the producer. "What's she doing in my shot?" It doesn't seem quite the moment to explain to him the research approach that anthropologists call "participant-observer". Or the other one called having a bit of a lark.

The world's oldest game - finding a mate - begins. The Hmong girls line up on one side of the clearing while a line of boys faces them about six metres away. Each girl produces a black cloth ball, about the size of a large softball, which she has sewn. Without much ceremony, the balls start to fly back and forth between the lines. Shuffling begins as the teenagers re-arrange their places up and down the lines.

"What's happening?" I ask the other anthropologist. He explains that couples who like each other move opposite one and other, catching and throwing the ball. "If you don't like the person who's throwing the ball to you, you move, or throw it without enthusiasm. You might even drop it." "And what makes a good Hmong 'catch'?" I ask, wincing at the unavoidable pun. "Partners must be from a different clan," he answers. "A boy wants a girl who is pretty and a good lover, but also smart and a strong worker - women here work very hard. The girls also want a partner who is a hard worker, and from a respectable family with no opium addicts."

The ball game, known as joo pa, is gentle. There are smiles and giggles, and banter is swapped across the lines, although the girls seem rather solemn. I notice one girl, less than interested in her opposite numbers, resort to a universal stratagem: she retires from the line to Mae Tho's equivalent of the powder room. The rhythmic swing of arms continues beneath the bright sky, the gaiety of the spectacle contrasting with the hard life that is the Hmong's lot for the rest of their year.

With as little warning as it had begun, the game ends. Winks and nods have been traded across the lines and the clans; later will come the chatting up and petting and bride price negotiations. Without further ado, the boys stroll away, snap their sunglasses on, kick-start their machines and buzz off into the 21st century. Among the modern Hmong, it seems that this is the way the future begins - not with a smooch but a wheel-spin.

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